


Making It Through

by CesarioWriter



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Alcoholic Elsa (Disney), Angst, Business Professional Elsa (Disney), F/F, Gay Disaster Elsa (Disney), Hopeful Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-09
Updated: 2018-06-09
Packaged: 2019-05-20 02:14:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14885693
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CesarioWriter/pseuds/CesarioWriter
Summary: Broken by Anna's departure, Elsa has to discover what there is left in this heartless world for her to live for - Family? She could leave them behind without a thought, now that Anna is gone. Meaning? That left with the last traces of Anna. The bottom of the next bottle? Well. Its worked so far. But even that only works so long.





	Making It Through

**Author's Note:**

> Written in response to the prompt challenge "Best I ever had"

Goodbye

A single word, with the space between the wrong letters, a chasm between the B and the Y. 

Twenty seven years, written in a single word.

Seven letters to encapsulate everything that had happened between them, from that long ago day when Elsa had first seen the tiny hand flailing in the air, to the last time she fell asleep next to a furnace that kept the time of her heart. 

Not one for histrionics, it was a wonder that Elsa stayed on her feet when she spied those letters, scrawled in that all too familiar hand. She didn't remember a soft kiss to her cheek that morning, barely breaking through her peaceful rest, as had happened every morning before no matter how they'd ended their night. 

It was then that Elsa learned how easy it was to pretend to be fine. How capable she, the good one, was at pretending that she didn't have vodka in her water bottle while showing up to work. Days, weeks, months! All passed in a haze, nights blurring together in a quagmire of emptiness.

A casual chat or two came about her performance, from those who supervised her at work. A curious thing - capable as she was, even in the fugue that had become her existence, she didn't fall behind on her work. At her worst, she remained in the middle of the pack at work. Had she been on the top of her game, surely she would have ascended higher, maybe even been promoted.

She stared at her glass.

An ugly thing, a rough lipped plastic festooned with faded cartoon characters that Anna had gotten from a long forgotten child's meal as a collectable cup (collect all 8! the garish text proclaimed). Cloudy from endless washing, the formerly clear plastic bore the scars of its existence with alarming plainness and she stared, the liquid within clearer than anything else in her life. 

She tore her gaze away and flipped through the channels. One after another, late night hosts prattled on in endless meaninglessness and she watched them, in endless succession, saying nothing. A late night movie came up between commercials and she stopped, allowing the narrative to start to build unheeded. 

She looked down at her coffee table, the one she'd chosen with Anna after they'd gotten the apartment. 

Unbidden, unasked for, an unreasoning anger rose in her chest and she brought her fist down on the painted plywood and thin veneer. Maybe it was a good thing they couldn't have ever afforded nice things. 

She stared down at the shambles of her coffee table, drink in hand. She took another mouthful of the vodka, a solid swallow that warmed her through. The burn had long since disappeared when she drank. 

She set down her glass and turned, her eyes turning to the claptrap barstools they'd salvaged.

Before she passed out for the night, the bar stools, an end table and her two dining room chairs had been added to the coffee table in a broken heap of pressed wood pulp gathered in the center of her living room. The bottle of vodka hadn't been reduced further.

The following morning, bright and early, her head was pounding as Elsa poured out the vodka into the kitchen sink. For good measure, she took the saved bottle of wine that she'd originally kept in case Anna wanted to celebrate anything, and poured that out as well. As much as it made her heart pang to see it disappear in burbling descent down the drain, the scent rising and smacking her across the face, she did so. She watched every drop pour and tossed each bottle, then carried out bag after bag of garbage to the chute that dropped directly into the dumpster. 

Goodbye.

Seven letters of farewell carved on her heart. 

She couldn't live by them anymore. Despite how much she wished for an end to it all, she would continue. Life would continue. 

She took a deep breath and released it as she released the last bag of garbage into the garbage chute of her apartment building. 

It would take time, and she wasn't anywhere near healed, but she was better than she had been. 

She might not be worthy of Anna, but she could be worthy of herself. 

She had to be. 

It took a few weeks for her to settle into the new normal. Come home, try not to drink, try not to wallow. It took months longer before she didn't feel the desire to crawl back inside that bottle. 

It may have been a thin hope, a vain hope even, but it was one she clung to that allowed her to remain strong. 

That frisson of slowly growing hope that someday, distant into the future, she might run into someone who knew Anna and have them tell her that Elsa was doing just fine. After having her heart ripped out, after having her entire life upended, Elsa was doing fine. 

Despite every last thing that she did in her life being driven by being worthy of the thought of Anna, she was doing fine. 

Elsa accepted her promotion to team lead, then manager, then project lead, all with alacrity. She didn't much care either way. More responsibility, less, she was continuing through life without the light that gave her meaning. 

All she had was the memory, and that would be enough. It had to be. 

It didn't matter anymore if there'd been a reason - had it been Elsa's inability to open herself up to Anna's probing questions and ever present need to know more? Had it been that they were sisters by accident of birth and circumstance? Had it been that Elsa wasn't supportive enough, wasn't there enough, didn't offer enough of herself? 

None of those questions mattered because the answer was the same. Anna had left. Elsa was alone. 

Oh, to be sure, Elsa was able to call others to her bed when she wished to assuage an ache - nameless, faceless, forgotten as soon as they'd left from defiling the bed she'd ascended to heights unknown with Anna. 

Still.

Elsa remained steadfast, a husk of the woman she'd been, continuing through life and calling their foster parents regularly. Yes, she was fine. Yes, work was going well. No, she hadn't heard from Anna. No, she had no idea why Anna had left. Yes, it was sad. Yes, she wished Anna would get back in touch with them sometime. 

Years passed. Presidents were elected and stepped down, reality shows ascended and faded to nothingness, songs barely registering before they disappeared. 

Except that fucking G6 song. It had been popular when Anna had been in Elsa's arms and still, it persisted in the clubs. Every fucking time, a quiet - or not so quiet - night, and Elsa was blasted with the same phrases, tired lines that pounded against her skull.

_when sober girls around me, they be acting like they drunk, they be acting like they drunk_

It made Elsa wish she still drank. 

Instead, she sipped on her water and smirked at the girls that would come up and grind on her. Some, if they were lucky, would be taken home and given a night. It didn't matter either way if it was one to remember. 

Nothing mattered much. 

Time passed by, inexorably progressing ever closer to when Elsa would not have to care any longer. That blessed day of peace. 

It was stupid, downright idiotic to have her existence hang still upon a woman who had clearly made her farewell. 

Seven letters, scrawled on a mirror. 

Maybe that was why it was such a shock to see new letters scrawled. 

_I didn't have a choice_

The same scrawl - oh to be sure, some changes over the years, but the same core scrawl that Elsa had long ago committed to memory. 

The same shade. Anna's shade. 

She'd never forgotten. 

She hated herself for hoping. 

So she convinced herself that she didn't. That the message didn't matter. It couldn't matter. Anna had decided it was done, and so had Elsa. There was no more "them", there was nothing to salvage.

She cleaned the message off her mirror and did not have a drink. 

She felt inordinately proud of herself for that. 

Another came a few nights later.

_I still love you_

Elsa could not-

She cleaned off the message almost as soon as she read it, the letters smearing beneath her fingers with a teary aggression. 

She had half a bottle of gin and hated herself with every swallow and botanically infused burp. 

She truly hated herself in the morning as she blearily glared at herself in the mirror. No message was inscribed, but a small heart was drawn in the corner. 

Elsa didn't clean it off.

She was a bitch on wheels for the next two days, glaring hard at the rest of the bottle that had been cracked, that represented the hole she had been drawn back to the edge of, and loathed everything about what that heart represented. 

It wasn't until the third day that she truly learned what it was to feel a bone deep self loathing. 

A bomb threat was called in to her office. Wired to the doors, windows designed to be high impact resistant, as in all high rise buildings, so no egress there. All fire alarms, all badge entry and egress wired to the same half megaton bomb that sat beneath them.

Then the Crimson Fucking Blur broke through her office window. 

The Crimson Blur had emerged in the year when Elsa had been thoroughly sequestered in the bottle. Masked, with super strength, near invulnerability, and a loose flowing mane of red hair - and truly, who thought THAT was a good idea - the Crimson Blur had been a beacon of hope and light for the city for far too long for Elsa to truly muster energy to care about by the time she had crawled out of the bottle. Not that it mattered. Everything was taken care of by the fucking Crimson Blur.

"Eh-DUCK!" 

The shouted tones were those which Elsa followed immediately, mildly obscured as they were by the obfuscation of a vocal scrambler. She'd recognize those tones anywhere. 

The Crimson Blur beat the head of her opponent against solid concrete until they slumped and she hovered over the slumped form, breathing heavily. Then she raised her head, darted her gaze around Elsa's office and grabbed the limp form of her opponent and threw them bodily out of the room. 

Elsa had already been moving as soon as the Crimson Blur had initially stopped moving after subduing her opponent. Even with her speed and agility, the Crimson Blur was halted by Elsa's hand wrapping firmly around her forearm. 

Quietly, firmly, after so many years, all Elsa could say was, "You take care of this and you come and explain. I will not wait any longer."

Wide eyed fear met her and a short, sharp nod. Elsa released her clawed hold and stepped back, the bare interaction not enough to cause the Crimson Blur to rend an excuse to the handlers that spoke into her ear. 

Well.

That answered capably where Anna had gone. 

Elsa stopped at her desk and stared at the paperwork that fluttered over the polished wood. 

What in the ever loving fuck was she supposed to do now?


End file.
